JSTOR: How to find
The most direct way to find JSTOR is to find the A-Z database list on the library's homepage (under the main search box). Click on the letter "J".
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
An archive of more than 4,600 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences from nearly 1,200 publishers. Thanks to both the Murphy Library Endowment Fund and UWL Student Differential Tuition for providing access to the JSTOR Arts & Sciences XV collection.
JSTOR: Tutorial Videos
JSTOR: Tips
All Content vs Images
In JSTOR, you can view "all content" or just "images":
On the left side, you can also filter results in other ways:
Basic vs Advanced Searching
There are two search forms on the JSTOR database: a Basic Search and an Advanced Search. The library defaults to the Advanced Search.
Basic Search
- Place words within quotation marks to search for exact phrases (“to be or not to be”).
- Use Boolean operators to construct a better search (
- “tea trade” AND china
- “tea trade” NOT china
Advanced Search
- Use the drop-down boxes to limit search terms to the title, author, abstract, or caption text.
- Use the drop-down boxes to combine search terms using the Boolean operators, AND/OR/NOT.
- Use the “Narrow by” options to search only articles, include/exclude book reviews, search for content published during a particular time frame, or in a particular language.
- Focus an article search in specific disciplines and titles using checkboxes.
Search Results
The format and display of search results is the same for Basic and Advanced searches.
- Use "Academic Content" option to filter results by journal articles or ebook chapters.
- Use "Primary Source Content" option to filter results by the type of primary source.
- Use the "Publication Date" menu to limit results to a certain publication time period.
- Use the "Subject" menu to limit results to journals related to specific subjects.
- Use the "Access Type" menu to limit your results by type of access.
- Use the "Sort by" menu to view search results by relevance, oldest items, or newest items.
- Use the "Export Selected" menu to choose the export format
Search Relevance
Relevance on JSTOR is a combination of many things. Key elements include:
- More unique terms in the text result in higher scores when searches contain those terms. For example, the keyword “epistemology" gets a greater boost than “university” because it is less common.
- Phrase matches are boosted higher than just keyword matches. A search for "the quick brown fox" will assign higher relevance to a document containing the exact words "the quick brown fox" than a document containing "the brown fox is quick."
- More recent content is given a slight boost.